Monday 13 May 2013

Happy Mothers' Day!


What do women want, you wonder? Hmm! Let's see...

In between going through all our childhood being told that we are meant to keep the house clean; refrain from being violent "because it's un-lady like"; strive towards dreams that would include a prince charming and a glass sandal [in the figurative or literal sense]; aim to be the "coolest" teenagers without being cheap naive young sluts; go through high school and college as the invincible alpha beings who can handle pressure from every corner of life and then impress some bloke who would probably just want to marry us for all the wrong reasons; have beautiful and SMART kids with the bloke as is expected of us, while keeping a full time job with a straight face...

and of course...

Fighting for a top spot in class with the boys while being able to keep up with the fashion trends to impress the same boys; losing friends one by one as our careers, our relationships with "the man of our dreams" and [maybe, just maybe] a kid-on-the-way or already-born child takes centre stage in our lives, as we try to please 'the girls', our men's boys, our in-laws, our siblings, our parents, not to forget our colleagues, longtime high school and college buddies, the women at the community centre or church, not to mention our own kids...

All this time - especially in our teenage hood - we stress over the shame we'd put our families through if we were to fall pregnant, yet, we do not wanna disappoint that "boy" who's every girl we know is a dream 'cause he wants to have sex with us but we're not ready yet. So we end up torn between a rock and hard place all because this bloke has chosen us and not the mean prettier girls we know. And it makes us feel so damn special!

And then in our early 20s, we feel like we could concur the world; we have just completed college, we have a great job with a decent salary and the future looks promising. Then we turn 25 and start worrying about the big 30, 'cause it approaches so damn fast! So we wonder what it would do to us if we reached 30 and would still not have achieved all the dreams we had the timeline for. You know, the "I will have had three degrees, gotten married to the man of my dreams (who had better fit into my checklist) and had kids by the time I turn 30" kind of dreams.

Realising that we may not achieve half, if not all of them by then, we end up settling for a totally different life. Then we become miserable, if not resentful towards everyone and everything we think might have had a hand in "destroying our dreams" and then we sink into depression and watch the years race by as we get in too deep on the routines of our daily lives - get up earlier than everyone to fix a quick breakfast, drop the kids at school, go to work (which we don't even like but stay in because it pays the bills with hardly any savings), pick up the kids from school, get home, bathe the kids, prepare dinner, serve it, help the kids with their homework, retire to bed exhausted and then do it all over again the following and every other day - that we forget who ever wanted to be.

As soon as we turn 30, we start worrying about turning 40, and menopause, and wrinkles, and getting old, and losing our shine, and... well... dying from some weird old age or lifestyle disease... without having achieved all our dreams! You know, the job of our dreams, probably being famous - for the vain - (sorry to say), the prince charming chapter, BEAUTIFUL and SMART kids, a beautiful home; a happy family, you name it.
Still wanna know what we want? Hmm... The truth is, we don't know 'cause we live all our lives trying to be us as well as everything else the society expects us to be! So we die still trying.
It's Mothers' Day. It's the month of May, so I dedicate it to my fellow mothers.
What do we want; as women and as mothers, really? I'm gonna use this month to reach out to all the mothers to help me attempt to tackle this question.

Yeah, I'm talking to all of you; the married mothers, the single mothers, the foster mothers, the grandmas who take care of their grand kids for whatever reason, the sisters who have taken their nieces and nephews in for whatever reason. Yeah, I'm gonna be talking to all of you this month, even the pregnant ones, not to mention the ones who keep starring at the pill every night wondering when to stop taking it for fear of the unknown. And no, I won't forget those who wish they had kids as well as those who are trying to have kids but that belly just won't keep anything in because I was once you. Yeah, I know you can't help going, "Oow" every time a woman walks past you pushing a pram with a sleeping baby in it... and I'm gonna be talking to you too 'cause I feel you.

We are going to explore what it is that makes us wish we could celebrate the second Sunday of the month of May (Mothers' Day) every other Sunday amidst all the junk that goes on inside our heads [that I have mentioned above].

You know, a lot of us complain that men don't get us. But I'm gonna need us to be very honest this month as we celebrate what makes us the mothers that we are or wish to be, if we are to seize the day and be happy.
For now, I know I'm not too late to wish the working moms, the foster moms, the full time moms, the grandmas, the aunties-cum-moms, the new moms and my fellow single moms; a HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY!

I know the best of us are already getting ready for the week ahead; packing kids' lunches, already preparing tonight's dinner, lunch or even breakfast (depending on the time zone in which this finds you), preparing for that meeting [or presentation] at work tomorrow [or in the course of this week]... whatever it is you're doing right now, do not - even for a second - forget that God's got you.

I mean, I don't know any mother who could say there isn't a God (or a higher power, depending on what your faith entails), yet whenever they look into their kids' eyes, they see something their hearts could never fathom. They see God's true love for them. They see inspiration. They see a miracle(s). They see, well, something bigger than them. They see... God.

I could go on, on end, about how being a mother makes me feel or how it has transformed me as an individual, but that could just be me, for I don't know about your experience - you who's reading this right now. But let's just agree on one thing; motherhood has its bad days, it does. But it's mostly a crazy party you wish would never end :-).

My 5-year-old promised to let me lose today because the teacher told them to help their mothers on Mothers' Day, but I've been breaking my back since we got home from church as usual. No complains, though :-). Gotta go now, mommy duties call :-).

Again, Happy Mothers' Day, fellow mothers. Catch you all in my next post when I address you each and let everyone understand why we will never truly know what we want, but that we shall try being the best we can be till... well... till we are no more!

Till then, God bless.

P.S.: Listen to Matt Redman's 'Never Once' from his 2010 album; '10, 000 Reasons'.